Thursday, October 23, 2014

Monday, September 01, 2014

Emotionally Charged and Unforgettable... A Magnificent Documentary Film on the Provocative Topic of Exotic Pets.

Praised by critics as one of the best films of the year, director Michael Webber takes viewers deep inside the controversial subculture of raising the most dangerous animals in the world as common household pets.Set against the backdrop of a heated national debate, director Michael Webber chronicles the extraordinary journey of two men at the heart of the issue – Tim Harrison, a police officer whose friend was killed by an exotic pet; and Terry Brumfield, a big-hearted man who struggles to raise two pet African lions."An exceptionally compassionate, fair-minded film. This topic could easily have been sensationalized as reality TV, but Webber takes the high road, honoring the sanctity of all life while focusing his film on an intimately human scale." - Seattle TimesPlease Watch: http://theelephantinthelivingroom.com/

Thursday, July 17, 2014

"Everywhere transience is plunging into the depths of Being… It is our task to imprint this temporary, perishable earth into ourselves so deeply, so painfully and passionately, that its essence can rise again, “invisibly,” inside us. We are the bees of the invisible. We wildly collect the honey of the visible, to store it in the great golden hive of the invisible."—Rainer Maria Rilke

Tuesday, July 01, 2014

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Enjoying Mu by Kurt SpellmeyerThe bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara-the one known in Chinese as Kwan Yin-describes Mu this way in the Heart Sutra, probably the most important sutra in Zen:In emptiness there is no form, no feelings, perceptions, impulses, consciousness. No eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind; no realm of eyes and so forth until no realm of mind cosciousness. No ignorance and also no extinction of it, and so forth until no old age and death and also no extinction of them. No suffering, no origination, no stopping, no path, no cognition, also no attainment with nothing to attain.... Even if this emptiness looks a lot like death or like the world coming to an end. It's effect on our lives is astonishing. It can free you from every fear. There's no memory, habit, or buried trauma-no obstacle of any kind-that it can't dissolve like water wearing down a stone.... The nature of things doesn't change at all. What has changed is our perception of them. We discover that everything is Mu, and that Mu is everything."Form is emptiness," and "Emptiness is form." And when we see our obstacles for what they are-fundamentally nothingness-their hold over us gradually erodesThe Book of Mu (P.278-9)

Friday, October 18, 2013

FIVE SURPRISING WAYS OXYTOCIN SHAPES YOUR LIFE By Jeremy Adam Smith, October 17, 2013, Greater Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life, UC Berkeley"It’s been called the cuddle hormone, the holiday hormone, the moral molecule, and more—but new research suggests that oxytocin needs some new nicknames. Like maybe the conformity hormone, or perhaps the America-Number-One! molecule..."

“Individuals who scored high for the resiliency trait on a personality questionnaire tended to be capable of more opioid release during social rejection, especially in the amygdala,” a region of the brain involved in emotional processing, Hsu says. “This suggests that opioid release in this structure during social rejection may be protective or adaptive.”The more opioid release during social rejection in another brain area called the pregenual cingulate cortex, the less the participants reported being put in a bad mood by the news that they’d been snubbed.
The researchers also examined what happens when the participants were told that someone they’d expressed interest in had expressed interest in them – social acceptance. In this case, some brain regions also had more opioid release. “The opioid system is known to play a role in both reducing pain and promoting pleasure, and our study shows that it also does this in the social environment,” says Hsu...
“It is possible that those with depression or social anxiety are less capable of releasing opioids during times of social distress, and therefore do not recover as quickly or fully from a negative social experience. Similarly, these individuals may also have less opioid release during positive social interactions, and therefore may not gain as much from social support,” Hsu theorizes."
The rest of the article at U of MI Health: http://www.uofmhealth.org/news/archive/201310/opioid-socialMolecular Psychology Journal:http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/mp201396a.html

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

FREE Online Screening of this film THIS WEEK until the 17th! Eight people. Eight illnesses. One journey into the heart of the Amazon jungle. They went looking for alternatives to the modern medicines that failed them. What they found would change their lives forever.

HOW FAR WOULD YOU GO TO HEAL?Parkinson's Disease, Breast Cancer, Diabetes, Depression... Despite remarkable advances in modern medicine, our society still struggles to effectively treat these and other common illnesses.Witness the story of eight brave souls as they leave the developed world behind in search of deeper answers. Living in seclusion for one month in the heart of the Amazon jungle, these men and women take part in the powerful healing practices of Peru's indigenous medicine men, working with centuries-old plant remedies and spiritual disciplines. In their most desperate hour, these patients are forced to confront not only their physical ailments, but their own spiritual and psychological barriers in the process. Five will return with real results, two will return disappointed, and one won't come back at all.OFFICIAL SELECTION:Mill Valley Film Festival
Environmental Film Festival
Starz Denver Film Festival
Tel Aviv Spirit Film Festival
Byron Bay Film Festival
Sydney Latin American Film Festival
Connecticut Film Festival
Dominican Republic Migrant Worker Film Festival

Sunday, October 13, 2013

Saturday, October 12, 2013

"Sirens of the Lambs," the latest installation in his city-wide series of works, “Better Out Than In,” features a barnyard-worth of plush toys poking their squishy heads through the slats of a slaughterhouse delivery truck for Farm Fresh Meats. Their heads sway, mouths agape, anthropomorphized faces seemingly aware of their fate—and they squeal and squeak, loudly, all the while. “I know what you’re thinking: isn’t it a bit subtle?” the satirical audio tour featured on Banksy’s website says of piece. “Here, the artist Banksy is making some sort of comment on the causal cruelty of the food industry. Or perhaps something vague and pretentions about the loss of childhood innocence.” - Willy Blackmore (Banky's Not So Silent Lambs Hit the Streets of NYC, TakePart, Oct 11, 2013)

Saturday, September 28, 2013

"You share with people who earned the right to hear your story. You have to think long and hard about who has earned the right to hear this story, and with whom am I in a relationship with that can bear the weight of the story." Brene Brown.

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Towards the end of my stay in the States 2000, I was living on rationed multipack double-stuffed Oreos from CVS for a week, then dozens of donuts from Dunkin Donuts for another. In Switzerland 2004, it was cheap multipack chocolate bars for a better part of a year. In Korea 2009, several weeks worth of multipack ramen. All under $5.I recommend this documentary film for those interested in food, the food industry, food insecurity. This happens not just in the States, but everywhere junk food is advertised widely and prevalent on every corner throughout major cities and around the world where food insecurity exists.

"If you look at what has happened to the relative price of fresh fruits and vegetables it has gone up 40% when the obesity epidemic began... In contrast the relative price of processed foods has gone down by 40%. So if you only have a limited amount of money to spend, you're going to spend you're going to spend it on the cheapest calories you can get, and that's going to be processed foods. This has to do with our farm policy and what we subsidize and what we don't." - Marion Nestle, Author of 'Food Politics' from the documentary 'A Place at the Table' (2012)

On the occasion of the 30th São Paulo Biennial, Galeria Luciana Brito presents Mexican artist Héctor Zamora's most recent use of brick as a material. In Inconstância material ["Material inconstancy"], Zamora arranged twenty bricklayers in the gallery space, who toss bricks to each other in a circuitous pattern extending from the interior gallery to the gangway to the parking lot — lifting, tossing, and chatting as if it's a typical day at a construction site. Zamora brings the bricklayers inside to foreground the intimate processes by which our buildings and societies are constructed, and to suggest that (hierarchical) systems of construction and fabrication within the art world depend upon and reflect those of society. The service culture of art and its hidden mechanisms are called into question. The piece wonders who is serving whom in the art world, and what, if anything, is being constructed?In Inconstância Material the endless but purposeless passing of bricks nullifies the act in terms of productivity. But the bricklayers are not just working — they're passing rehearsed comments back and forth along with the bricks. Zamora has invited the Brazilian poet and artist Nuno Ramos to create a spoken piece, Gigante ["Giant"] (2012), to accompany the physical one. Colloquial expressions that refer to parts of the body have been gathered and organized for the workmen to shout in a sequence that dismantles their phrasing, distributing a unified body on a circuit. This site-specific geometry of speech correlates with the shape of the movement. By momentarily formalizing bits of working-class language within the walls of the gallery, an uncategorizable moment between stasis and movement, work and leisure, art and life, arises. Typical of Zamora's oeuvre as a whole, Inconstância material suggests the possibilities for creativity and play even in the most confining of circumstances.The ceramic brick is an object that continually recurs throughout Zamora's work. In projects like 6, da série Potencialidades ["6, from the Potentialities series"] (São Paulo, 2009) and ­­H20 (São Paulo, 2010), the brick itself is materially deconstructed; in other projects, most notably De Belg wordt geboren met een baksteen in de maag ["Every Belgian is born with a brick in his stomach"] (2008), the stratification of the laboring classes themselves is deconstructed.(Taken from Elvia Wilk entitled "Tactics of suspension and deceleration — on Héctor Zamora", wrote for the catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition Inconstância Material. Courtesy of Héctor Zamora & Luciana Brito Galeria). http://www.domusweb.it/en/news/2012/09/17/hector-zamora-inconstancia-material.htmlINCONSTÂNCIA MATERIAL _ Hector Zamora from / REGISTRO DE ARTE / on Vimeo.